SSJ Studio designs a garden in Nanning inspired by Chinese landscape painting

Summary

SSJ Studio's 2018 'In the Mountains' garden in Nanning translates the 'six distances' principle of classical Chinese landscape painting into a walkable sequence. The garden employs white, open-lattice steel forms created with digital fabrication techniques to form curvilinear, continuous surfaces around a central reflective pool.

Why it matters

The project offers a concrete example of computational tools serving an interpretive design logic rooted in cultural heritage, rather than merely generating algorithmic forms. This approach provides a useful counter-narrative in a field where the concept of 'parametric' is often equated with innovation. For landscape architects, the project demonstrates that a deliberately limited material palette—white steel, gravel, water, and bamboo—can carry complex spatial narratives without resorting to ostentation.

Highlights

• The six viewpoints of classical Chinese painting (scope, height, distance, fullness/emptiness) were reorganized into a body-based, sequential walk.
• Open-lattice steel skeletons with non-linear surfaces, where curvature and joint consistency were coordinated through digital modeling.
• Designed as a temporary Garden Fair installation, yet conceived with a formal scale intended to sustain its presence even after the event.

Critical take

The text, published in 2026 about a 2018 project, reads more like a polished case study brochure than a critical analysis. The 'computational craft' framework is quite generous for an interpretive, non-algorithmic design, as the article itself admits. Furthermore, the rhetoric that 'the body becomes a tracking instrument' somewhat exaggerates the situation for a 2,000 m² fair garden.